Yes, bitcoin should grow faster than Gartner's Hype Cycle
Especially since, unlike a startup, bitcoin is an open source project. It is not a small group of employees trying to forge some idea into gaining traction against the odds. Bitcoin is a concept that has so many interesting facets and continues to gain recognition and participation from an ever-widening subset of the population. Don Tapscott described what is happening over a half decade ago with his book MacroWikinomics. Mass collaboration + openness + sharing and collaboration = rebooting of an industry. Bitcoin is not a startup like Square, Stripe, PayPal which are reducing slightly the friction of the banking system -- Bitcoin is in the process of rebooting the industry of money.
Here's another example showing this:
YouTube: Bitcoin GitHub History Visualized [through October 3, 2011]
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OztVYTS_Ei8
And that is just for the bitcoin.org client. Add in all the software developed by the exchanges, daytrading and arbitrage bot developers, e-commerce sites, etc. Add in all the forum posts, news articles, blog entries, twitter and facebook updates, youtube videos, etc.
Some day there will be a term that describes the model that Bitcoin is emerging as. It isn't just mass collaboration on an open system. It isn't just a type of crowdfunding, or just some type of startup.
It is something entirely different.
We all know this. We can feel it inside.
What words will help to explain what this is?
I love that video. Who is that first little bee we see buzzing around - sirius_m?
